What do you do if you run out of minutes before the end of the month on your Assurance Wireless phone?

In addition to offering its customers a free cell phone, Assurance Wireless also offers its Lifeline customers 250 minutes of airtime each month.

Generous as that is, there are going to be times when that’s just not enough, times when you run out of minutes but still need to make important phone calls.

Luckily, there are several ways around this problem. Think of this as FreeGovernmentCellPhone.net’s handy guide to help you navigate your way to more minutes when you need them.

Solution #1: Paying ten cents per extra minute

It’s a fact of life: After your monthly 250 minutes have been used, you won’t be able to receive incoming calls and the only outgoing calls you can make will be to 911 and Assurance Wireless customer support. But if you have money in your account, you can pay 10 cents per minute over 250 minutes.

Solution #2: Upgrading your free Assurance Wireless plan

We strongly recommend that you consider taking advantage of Assurance Wireless’ extra minutes plan. By changing your free plan to either the $5 Talk Offer or the $20 Talk & Text Offer, you can substantially increase your monthly airtime even if you’re on a tight budget. As you will see, Assurance Wireless offers you lots of options. Here are the specifics:

$5 Talk Offer: Your free Assurance Wireless plan comes with 250 free minutes. If you pay five dollars a month, you can receive a total of 500 voice minutes.

$20 Talk & Text Offer: For an additional $20 per month you’ll receive a total of 1,000 voice minutes and 1000 domestic messages (text, IM and emails).

Neither of these extra minute plans allow rollover minutes. Whatever monthly minutes you don’t use will be lost at the end of the month.

If you use all of your monthly voice minutes before a new monthly cycle starts and you have a sufficient balance in your account, you will be charged 10¢ for each additional minute you use. If you are on the $20 Talk and Text Offer and use all your monthly text messages, each additional domestic text, IM, email and email notification message will cost 10¢ and each additional picture message will cost 25¢.

What’s more, you don’t have to make a long term commitment to either plan. You can upgrade to either of these two plans for a single month if need be. Assurance will automatically revert you to the free 250 minute plan if you leave your account at a zero balance and not have the money in the account to continue on the upgraded program.

Solution #3: Additional messaging

You can buy a subscription for monthly Messaging Packs of domestic text, picture, email and IMs on the following terms:

• $2.00 for 30 messages
• $5.00 for 200 messages
• $10.00 for 1,000 messages
• $20.00 for unlimited messages

Solution #4: Adding money to your account with Virgin Mobile Top-Up

Assurance Wireless is owned by Virgin Mobile, which manages your Assurance Wireless account. If you have the basic free Lifeline plan, you don’t need to keep a balance in your account, but if you want to add money to it, you can use either of Virgin Mobile’s Top-Up methods.

You can Top-Up your account using a credit card, debit card or PayPal account. The minimum amount per Top-Up is $10 and the maximum amount is $120. Or you can purchase a Virgin Mobile Top-Up card at any of thousands of retailers and update your account with that.

Alternately, you can choose to automatically Top-Up your account with Auto Top-Up. This will deduct a predetermined amount from your credit card, debit card or PayPal account. You choose Auto Top-Up amount and how often you want it topped up — once a month, once every 45 days, once every 90 days, or as soon as your balance falls below $5. The minimum Auto Top-Up amount is $10.

You add also money to your account on the web, by going to AssuranceWireless.com, logging in, and entering your Assurance Wireless phone number and account PIN. This will take you to the My Account page. There you can enter your payment method or Top-Up card PIN, and perhaps choose either the $5 Talk or $20 Talk & Text offer by selecting “Change Offers.” Or choose neither and you will be charged 10¢ for every extra minute over your 250 free minutes as long as you have money in your account.

It’s also easy to add money to your account right from your phone with a Virgin Mobile Top-Up card. Just hit the Up arrow on your phone keypad. From “My Account”, hit the button to “Top-Up Now”. Access your account by hitting the ‘Up’ arrow. You’ll then see your current offer and the minutes used this month. Then hit the “Down” arrow until you can see the “Buy More Minutes” section. There you can enter your payment method or Top-Up card PIN and possibly choose either of two offers: $5 for 500 minutes or $20 for 1000 minutes/1000 texts. Select which you want, if either. If you do not choose one, you still have the option to use more than the 250 free minutes each month by paying charged 10¬¢ for every minute – again, as long as you have money in your account.

Bottom line: 250 minutes per month is just the beginning for Assurance Wireless customers, because the company offers its Lifeline customers a wide variety of ways to get more from their free government cell phones.